Breast cancer series triggers memories, happy and sad, for author

Editor's note: The following is a first-person account of Foster's Web Editor Janine Mitchell's experience writing the Sunday series on breast cancer, and also her family's dealings with cancer.

I had a pit in my stomach and anxious feeling in my chest as the idea for a Breast Cancer Awareness Month series went unassigned. Somehow feeling like I had a personal responsibility to make sure it got done, my heart spoke for me and I said I'd do it.

Spending most of September and October meeting many brave and courageous women, I felt closer to my mother than ever. I spoke with survivors, family members of cancer patients, medical professionals and patient advocates to write this series, and understand it from as many angles as possible. Honestly, a couple times — after staying strong and displaying a comfortable, empathetic demeanor — I left the interview and I cried like a baby the whole way home.

My mom died from cancer two years ago.

Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in her early 20s, my dad had already helped her through her first cancer treatments before they were even married. Though he may not have known what was coming, his love for her was worth it. She went years, sometimes decades, without a sign of the “C word,” but it never went away. Upon their wedding day, she and my dad knew they wouldn't be able to conceive children because of the damage from her ovarian cancer. But my dad says, “It became a fact of life for us and we dealt with it ... I loved her so much it didn't matter.” And, after a lengthy adoption process, my sister and I joke, they finally “bought” us.

Mom's sickness popped up at precise times during her life. She was healthy throughout most of our childhood, unless she hid it extremely well, and cancer didn't strike again until I was about 14 years old. Whether it was an act of God's grace — blessing her for attending church every Sunday despite her partial social agenda for doing so — or a phenomenal coincidence, she always seemed to be well and sick at the right times — if there is such a thing.

Her best friend and confidante, Sandy, lived next door. Through the wooded path worn down by bare feet of summer and clunky winter boots, we'd wander into her beautifully manicured backyard full of gardens, an Elwood Road legend.

Cancer plopped itself down in the middle of Sandy's life, too, and my mom was healthy and helpful when Sandy was sick, knowing just the right amount of assistance. They were like a relay race tag-team of inspiration, tossing the “cancer ball” back and forth. It wasn't until Sandy passed away, and my sister and I were somewhat grown up, that the last and final 6-year attack slowly blew my mom's constantly glowing flame to a flicker.

Meeting with cancer patient advocates and navigators during this Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I felt incredibly close to the processes my mom went through — knee-buckling news, countless appointments, and hours spent hooked up to IV chemotherapy drips.

Survivor Dianne McMillen explained the “comfort in the johnnie room” where fellow patients got to know each other well, offering advice and support while sitting for hours of chemo treatments. Talking with cancer survivors I saw a bit of Mom in each of them — their temerity, eagerness toward every day, and appreciation for every ounce of kindness and handmade gift sent their way.

Dawnalee Holt, a survivor from Epping, said her life before and after cancer were not much different, which took me back. Then, as I thought more about it, I realized the similarity to my mom's outlook. In fact, when she died she was officially on “sick leave” from work, not admitting her onward climb up the stairway to heaven to anyone, even herself. As Ed Johnson, cancer survivor and founder of the Pease Greeters said, “This is just another event in my life, another thing to happen to me.”

She never wanted life to be any different. Mom never said, “after I die,” it was always, “when I get better.”

I've always thought my mom's calm but bold attitude outshone all others. She knew when to put her foot down, and when to let it slide — even if her cardiologist could pinpoint theXX date and time she was at a stressful, tight-lipped meeting because her pacemaker went crazy.

Though the elementary students in the school where she taught shivered in their little outgrown jeans when Mrs. Mitchell shrieked, “Walk in the hallway!,” I admired her.

I admired the way she mentally carried herself (because physically she was a bit hunched, but adorable nonetheless) and her simplistic “it's-not-necessary” lifestyle.

But, one of my biggest regrets is not telling her — or not knowing how.

My sister was always good at that, going to Mom with a problem and letting her help fix it. But for me, emotional issues causing anyone else to worry, something not fixable on my own with a little productivity and multitasking, gets filed away into my precisely-organized, manila-brain folder labeled “I'll be OK.”

I closely identified with Bernie Shultz's story, the second-week feature of the breast cancer series, when she explained her daughter's “normal reaction” to Bernie having cancer.

Her daughter basically ran from it, and Bernie explained, “No one wants to watch their parent die.” Though, I'm not sure of our exact similarities, I also just couldn't watch my mom suffer.

I inherited the “I'll be OK” trait from her, a woman who rarely complained, and never uttered a bad word about anyone. So, naturally, watching the rock in your life crumble to sand is a terribly confusing thing.

But, I was lucky ... ish. Though I didn't quite understand or realize my reaction to knowing she was going to die, I think my sister, mom and dad did. My sister never made me feel guilty for the hours she spent at my mom's side, being her live-in nurse in the last months of her life.

And, although I cherished every moment I was home from college in Boston, and it hurt like hell to go back, avoiding watching her die was my natural reaction.

As a child, I remember trembling in my bed, crying myself to sleep with my hands over my ears when my dad was violently ill with migraines — tempted to sleep outside just so I didn't have to hear it. This was kind of like that, only now as an adult, I had more control over my presence.

To put the nail in the coffin (OK, dry-sense-of-humor pun intended), my mom didn't pass away until I left home for another week of school, and I'm strangely thankful for that. I'm not sure I could have handled being in the same house, watching my mom take her last breath.

I got the phone call from my dad, on my way up five already-breath-taking flights of stairs to my Chinatown apartment, and my immediate reaction was sadness for him having lost his high school sweetheart, saying, “Dad, I'm so sorry.”

After a brief conversation about how I'd make it home to New Hampshire, he asked if I wanted the coroners to take her body or wait until I got home. It was that moment when I realized what he and my sister had just gone through, sitting and comforting my mom as life left her body. But, still, I couldn't do it — I told him to have them take her.

A similar situation arose this September, only this time I decided to be braver. My dad, sister and I finally buried my mom's ashes two long years after she died. This time, when my dad asked, “Do you want me to screw the box closed before you get here, or do you want to see her ashes?” I hesitated.

He said, “I'll take your apprehension as, you want to wait.”

My sister and I switched roles as I peeked into the box full of ashes and she refused to. Praying with all my might I didn't sneeze, I looked at my mom's remains, unsure of what I expected from it.

It was weird.

It was weird to think every piece of advice, every memory, every weeknight meal, every belly laugh, every time she got silly off a little Kahlua and milk, every quilt she spent months making, every child she helped, had literally turned to dust.

Though still it is weird to say, “My mom died,” after I know she put up a hard fight — just as breast cancer survivors Bernie, Wendy, Dawnalee, Ed and Terri have. Even through the pain and countless uncomfortable nights she still didn't want to die. She loved life more than anyone I know. She loved two adopted daughters unconditionally, loved being a “Mitchell,” and loved watching her students grow.

I may not have said this in first grade or even when I started college, but when I grow up, I want to be like my mom.

Though we work tirelessly to raise funds and patients muscle through nauseous days to get rid of cancer, the truth is, it never really leaves.

Either the survivor is stuck with life-long treatment, or they do Jimmy fund walks every now and then, or they wind up starting their own foundation — cancer sticks around.

After the grief of loved ones settles, and the trauma of treatment and surgeries subsides, cancer can ultimately bring out the best in people.

It reminds us to stay in the moment. For the terror cancer causes, it really does some great things.

Though it's still strange to me that my boyfriend of more than a year never met or has any real-world tangible context of who my mom was, I'm a better person for him and for anyone else I meet in the future, because of it.

A phrase I often catch myself rattling off, which wound up being a “mantra” of our relationship, may not have been part of my vocabulary pre-death of my mom.

After one year of suffering, another year beginning to heal, and now understanding the brevity of life, I say, “Do what you feel.”